Vampire Academy: New Generations

Chapter 8

After that... event, something seemed to snap in me and I started fighting harder and better, and every practice I seemed to be getting better. When I fought with the other novices, I started winning. Soon, I finally won my first hand-to-hand pairing, annihilating Dacia Turner, one of the only other female Dhampirs who was around the same age as me. I guess that because we'd always gotten along, she took it good-naturedly, applauding my performance, as did a few others. "The comeback seems to be starting," observed Trevor after class. "So it would seem." I said, happy he was right. He then gently touched my arm. "How's Eden?" It didn't surprise me that he knew. Gossip spread so fast around here sometimes, it felt like everyone had a psychic bond with everyone else.

"Okay. Coping." I didn't elaborate on how I knew that but he must have assumed I'd spoken to her recently. Our weird bond thing was a secret from the student body, especially because there was no way we could have a bond without raising any questions. "Trevor, you claim to know about Mia. You think she might have done that?" I asked as I turned to face him. I think he read my expression as a jealous one because he immediately began to deny it. "Whoa, hey, I'm not an expert on her or anything." He said, scared. "You're funny. But continue." I said as he nodded. "Honestly? No. Mia won't even do dissections in biology. I can't picture her actually catching a fox, let alone killing it." He said confidently. "Any friends who might do it for her?" He shook his head. "Not really. They're not really the types to get their hands dirty either. But who knows?"

Eden was still shaken when I met her for lunch later and her mood got worse when Natasha and

her crew wouldn't shut up about the fox. Apparently she'd had overcome her disgust enough to enjoy the attention the spectacle had brought her. Maybe she wasn't as content with her fringe status as I'd always believed. "And it was just there," she explained, waving her hands for emphasis. "Right in the middle of the bed. There was blood everywhere." Looking to Eden, I noticed she looked as green as the sweater she wore, and so I pulled her away before I even finished my food and immediately launched into a string of obscenities about Natalie's social skills.

"She's nice," Eden said automatically. "You were just telling me the other day how much you liked her." I nodded. "I do like her, but she's just incompetent about certain things." We stood outside our animal behavior class, and I noticed people giving us curious looks and whispering as they passed. I sighed. "How are you doing with all this?" I asked her, changing the subject. A half-smile crossed her face. "Can't you already feel it?" She asked. "Not really, but I still want to hear it from you." I said as she looked down and wrung her hands. "I don't know. I'll be okay. I wish everyone wouldn't keep staring at me like I'm some kind of freak." I held my straight face as inside, my anger exploded. The fox was bad. People upsetting her made it worse, but at least I could do something about them.

"Who's bothering you?" I asked, trying to seem concerned rather than murderously mad. But she saw right through me. "Evie, you can't beat up everyone we have a problem with." Okay, so she wouldn't answer me. But maybe I could guess? "Mia?" I asked her, partially because I really wanted to beat her up anyways. "And others," she said evasively. "Look, it doesn't matter. What I want to know is how this could have...that is, I can't stop thinking about that time—" I stopped her. "Don't," She looked annoyed. "Why do you keep pretending that didn't happen? You of all people. You'll normally talk about anything." She protested but I shook my head. "Listen, I may be partially Moroi... but I haven't specialized. And spirit? Not something I really wanna specialize in." I said as she rolled her eyes. "You reached out to the fox. You were going to help it." She tried but I stopped her. I'd heard what happened to the people who specialized in spirit and it didn't seem like something I wanted to specialize in.

"We need to forget about it. Me helping that crow was from a long time ago. We don't even really know what happened. I could have just put it's wing back in place or woken it up." I said as she stared at me with those big blue eyes, calculating her next argument. But she didn't say anything. She just nodded silently. "I just don't know about you sometimes." She said. "That's because you're the cautious, calculating one, and I'm the reckless, decisions on a whim one." With that, we returned to the lunch room and quickly finished our lunch, ignoring Natasha.